With the 2025 Texas Rangers season having come to an end, we shall be, over the course of the offseason, taking a look at every player who appeared in a major league game for the Texas Rangers in 2025.
Today we are looking at pitcher Jon Gray.
What a frustrating and disappointing season for the righthander, ending what was a frustrating and disappointing four year stint with the Texas Rangers.
Remember back in December, 2021? With a lockout looming, and the team coming off a 100 loss season, Texas snagged their half-billion dollar infield of Marcus Semien and Corey Seager, fulfilling their pledge that they were going to go big in the free agent market?
The Rangers signed three big free agents right before MLB shut down for several months. Along with Seager and Semien, they landed free agent pitcher Jon Gray on a 4 year, $56 million deal.
It was less splashy than the Seager and Semien signings, but was seen in some quarters as being perhaps the most savvy of the three deals. For Seager and Semien, the Rangers paid retail, and gave up a draft pick for each to boot. Gray, on the other hand, was unfettered by a qualifying offer, one of the myriad of mysterious moves made in the last decade or so by the Colorado Rockies, the team that drafted Gray third overall in the 2013 draft. He had mixed results in his six-plus years with Colorado, and had trouble staying on the mound, but there were signs that he could be really good. Get Gray out of the hitter’s paradise of Coors Field, and with some health and some fine-tuning, you potentially could find yourself with a #2 starter making #4 starter money.
Twas not to be, of course. 2022 and 2023 were okay, though the durability issues cropped up, and his performance when he was on the mound didn’t take the step forward that I think we all hoped for.
2024 saw his K rate dip, saw him miss more time, and ultimately saw him get shut down for the final month of the season due to a “right foot neuroma,” which isn’t one of those things I recall seeing very often on an injury report.
Then 2025. Two weeks before the season was to start, Gray was hit in the wrist by a line drive in a game against his former team. His wrist was broken, and he was sidelined once again. He returned after the All Star Break, with the team utilizing him in a multi-inning relief role. He only made six appearances, however, before going back on the injured list due to Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, ending his season.
Gray is now a free agent. He has presumably had surgery, though I haven’t seen anything definitively confirming that, and the recovery time from TOS surgery is generally nine to twelve months, so even if he signs with a team, he’d be missing a good chunk of the 2026 season.
And that assumes he wants to come back. In the aftermath of the TOS diagnosis, Gray indicated he was contemplating retirement. Given all the physical issues he has battled through, given his age — he turned 34 last month — it is understandable that he might decide to hang it up.
